Past Conditional Subjectivities: Enacting Relationships with the Non-Human in the Work of Ana Mendieta

Inspired by what literary scholar Lisa Lowe calls “the past conditional temporality”—or the “what could have been”—this paper examines how work of 20th-century Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta challenges modernist ontologies that separate human from non-human, simultaneously calling on older ways being and demonstrating they never disappeared. Many argue ecological crises Anthropocene are in large part due to proliferation worldviews set humans apart non-human world. The rise European rationalist philosophies early modern period played a central role instrumentalist relationships between This explores Mendieta’s Silueta Rupestrian Sculptures series (from 1970s 1980s) resist logic capitalism colonialism, revealing rationalism sought subdue always existed, will continue exist, can proliferate. Symbolic communication is key means mediating actualizing subjects, so, if non-instrumental relationship possible visual art ought be enactment. Through work, this considers mechanisms which possible. By considering meaning-making as basis for life, co-constitution human/non-human subjectivities, inherent permeability category individual, highlights counter-modernist practices special urgency age Anthropocene.